His Call To Battle Is Mostly Ignored

December 13, 1994|By Joe Maxwell. Special to the Tribune.

LORMAN, Miss. — Paul Hill sat in an isolated jail cell, alone with his thoughts. Earlier in the day, a federal judge in Pensacola, Fla., had sentenced him to life in prison in the July 29 killings of abortion doctor John Britton, 69, and his bodyguard, James Barrett, 74, outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola.

"You've got to expect (the judiciary) to treat what happened as though I was just killing an innocent, hard-working doctor," Hill said matter-of-factly by phone from his 15-by-13-foot cell in the Escambia County Jail.

A few days later, on Dec. 6, a Florida judge would sentence Hill, who had also been convicted on state charges, to die in the electric chair for the murders.

Hill, a 40-year-old, self-employed automobile restorer from Pensacola, was the first person prosecuted under a federal law that prohibits using violence against, or otherwise interfering with, those entering abortion clinics.

Immediately after being sentenced to die, Hill was transferred from jail to the Florida State Prison near Starke. The state's death sentence, which would take precedence over the federal sentence, will be appealed automatically to the Florida Supreme Court.

Some people view Hill as a potential martyr; many others, inside and outside the anti-abortion movement, question his sanity, a fact Hill is aware of and has trouble discussing.

"I've never been in any kind of setting where it was appropriate for someone to say, `Well, are you mentally stable?' "

When CBS-TV's Connie Chung questioned him during a Dec. 1 "Eye to Eye" interview on the matter, he balked four times at answering, and then threatened to end the interview.

When the Tribune posed the same question, Hill again skirted the issue several times, finally answering, "In my evaluation, I don't think I'm mentally, you know, disturbed."

Groups distance themselves

Hill says he would prefer to be known as the John Brown of the anti-abortion movement. Brown was a 19th Century abolitionist who conducted a campaign of terror and death against white slave owners. Some credit his actions with helping ignite the Civil War.

But neither Operation Rescue, known for its efforts at passive resistance to block abortion clinics, nor the nation's largest anti-abortion group, the National Right to Life Committee, is ready to give Hill such a distinction.

The National Right to Life Committee condemns Hill's actions and worries that the amount of media coverage he has gotten unavoidably leaves impressionable Americans thinking he is representative of the nation's scores of anti-abortion groups and millions of supporters.

"Certainly we think that from his actions and from his statements he appears unstable," said Michele Arocha Allen, spokeswoman for the group, which has chapters in all 50 states, 3,000 affiliates and a 50-person Washington staff to lobby Congress.

"For the media to profile and treat him as though he represents a constituency of the pro-life movement in America is totally irresponsible. . . . Millions of pro-life Americans are saddened by the violence that occurred outside the Pensacola clinic, as they are about what occurs inside of every abortion clinic every day."

Hill is unapologetic that he blew the heads off of two elderly men sitting in a truck, after which he walked away calmly. He told the Tribune that he shot the bodyguard as well as the doctor in part to protect his own life, a concern somewhat inconsistent with martyrdom.

Hill came late to the national abortion scene and has never worked constructively with any of the major anti-abortion organizations, including Operation Rescue, with which he had run-ins during summer 1993.

Several people present in 1993 at an Operation Rescue protest in Jackson, Miss., report having watched Hill scream and gesticulate at both pro-choice supporters guarding a clinic and abortion opponents picketing and trying to peacefully block the clinic entrance. Operation Rescue leaders were unable to calm him.

Hill acknowledged that the event had occurred and added, "The honest truth is that that was the first (Operation Rescue event) I'd ever been to."

Only months before, in March 1993, Hill had appeared on Phil Donahue's TV talk show and a few others, trying to defend the then-recent killing of Pensacola abortion doctor David Gunn. Hill and a few others claim that killing abortion doctors is justifiable homicide, if the doctor is about to abort an "unborn child."

Michael Griffin, another abortion opponent, was sentenced to life for that fatal shooting, though Griffin maintains his innocence.

Up until that point, Hill says, his opposition to abortion had mostly consisted of picketing outside a South Carolina abortion clinic.